A Celebration of the Radio Listening Hobby

I seem to be a man of contradictions. As I look at my "shack" (amateur radio speak for where I keep my radios!) I must be conflicted. I have radios from the 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s, and the 10s. I like radios of every era as each radio is a marvel of technology from the simplest to the most complex. Even radio designs we take for granted today are scientific wonders, and radio is itself, of course, magic! On the same table I use for day-to-day radio fun, I have two modern marvels of technology, and four

This summer has been a tough one for me in many ways, not the least of which is the minimal amount of time I have been able to spend playing radio. I have several commitments involving radio each week/month, but I do not consider that "playing" radio. To me, playing radio is where we get to sit down in front of a radio of any kind and do something with it just for the pure joy of it. The good thing about this hobby is it is always there whenever you are ready. It is like a good friend who

Suspected pirates surrender to crew members of the CGC Boutwell. (U.S. Coast Guard photo) Thanks to Mario Filippi (N2HUN) who has graciously allowed me to re-post this excellent piece here. It originally appeared on the SWLing.com Blog (ed. note: make sure to click on the images for a larger view so you can read the captured text - it is fascinating, and I am green with envy! - Robert) Tracking High Seas Pirates on Shortwave Radio by Mario Filippi (N2HUN) (All photos taken by author–click to enlarge) Ahoy! After spinning a radio dial for over a half-century, shortwave listening still

Frequent readers of this blog will know I am a big aviation monitoring fan. I have an inexpensive SDR dedicated to ADS-B monitoring which in turn sends data to FlightRadar24, which allows sharing of data from live feeds from around the world to be integrated with online data transferred through networks. Another such service is FlightAware which also integrates data from users into a very sophisticared tracking service. For those who receive (and send) flight data from ADS-B capable devices such as the RTL-SDR dongles or have Apps for their tablets and phones, FlightAware announced on Wednesday this change to

A typical radio day for me usually involves several different aspects of the radio hobby. Granted, I may include things others would not strictly call radio, but for me anything associated with the radio hobby is fair game! Sometimes this can be something as mundane as logging contacts, or checking for QSLs (confirmed contacts with other radio operators or stations), or it can be as exciting as putting some test equipment to work checking circuits or measuring frequency response. For me anything connected with radio in almost any form is interesting. A typical day (or portion thereof) might involve listening

Multipsk Software - A Review Here is a link to a review of the digital mode software MultiPsk (~3.5 meg PDF file) which I wrote for The Spectrum Monitor published in the September 2015 issue. I highly recommend either the free or the registered version of this software because it can decode almost anything on the airwaves. The registered version is about $45 as I recall, and it is the best money I have ever spent for software, and I have been around computers and software for a long time!! The free version will do a lot, in fact much

As I sit here listening to radio broadcasts from around the world on Free-to-Air Satellite I am reminded again of the great gift that is Radio. If you will forgive a little bit of personal nostalgia, radio has been for me a true gift, ever since I was a boy. I will not go into my past too much (we all have our stories), but when I was 8 years old I got my first radio on Christmas. It was a General Electric clock radio with a big AM dial, circa. the late 1960s. I spent many, many hours seeking

Winter always brings thoughts of kit building for me as cold weather, a hot soldering gun, and a bag full of parts make for an enjoyable evening. A friend of mine, Ryan W1RYN, sent me information about a great aircraft monitoring receiver kit which can be built just as a board, or assembled into a metal case. The assembled kit in the case may be found here, but the same company sells the kit in multiple configurations. Here are two images of the completed kit with the case: I have ordered the parts kit and the enclosure, and I

I have been into computers for a long, long time. I will resist the urge to regale you with tales of computer exploits back in "the good old days" of DOS, Amiga, and even earlier days with my TI-99 /4A with cassette deck. Over the years I have used and abused some really excellent software, and there have certainly been programs which stood out from the crowd and made you simply say "Wow!" So with all this experience you can imagine not many programs cause me to turn my head, drop my jaw, or gush over their capabilities. In the